A
Look at what the Bible Says
Since God has revealed Himself to
us in Scripture, and
the doctrine that He wants taught in His church is nothing other than
what the
Bible says; it should be obvious that those who refuse to teach what
the Bible
says about the age of the earth, or affirm that it is true, do so
because
another authority has replaced the authority of Scripture in their
lives.
The delusion which grips our present age is
so
virulent that unprepared theologians retreat from the skeptics in fear,
like
puppies afraid of a reprimand. Instead of answering their false claims
with a
resounding “Thus saith the Lord,” they
turn on
Scripture in a vain and foolish attempt to make the words of Scripture
agree
with their own ignorance. Like victims of an
hallucination, they act as if God did not know what He was doing when
He caused
the words of Genesis to be written. They blindly try to make the Bible
say what
it clearly does not say, and never was intended to say. Nevertheless,
God knew from
the beginning what the skeptics would be saying. He knew perfectly well
that
they would claim that the earth is millions of years old. And because
of His
love for us, because He did not want us to be deceived, He designed the
book of
Genesis to exclude any possibility of “millions of years”. And having
done that,
He wants us to believe and teach exactly what He said, not what men
think
(Isaiah
Genesis
Chapter 1:1-5
1 ¶ In
the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth.
2
And
the earth
was without form, and empty; and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the
waters.
3 ¶ And God said, Let there be
light: and there was light.
4
And
God saw that
the light was good: and God separated
the light from the darkness.
5
And
God called
the light Day, and called the darkness Night. And the evening and the
morning
were the first day.
[Comment: In verse five God
defines the word day by the
light shining on the earth. Furthermore, the fact that the light was
separated
from the darkness, and that God uses the words “evening and morning” to
describe that first day, tell us that the first day was the same length
as any
other day that has an “evening and morning”.]
Genesis Chapter 1:6-2:3
And the evening and the morning
were the second day… And
the evening and the morning were the third day… And the evening and the
morning
were the fourth day… And the evening and the morning were the fifth
day… And
God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was
very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth
day. Thus the heavens and the earth, and everything in them, were
finished. And
on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested
on the
seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the
seventh
day, and made it holy: because on that day he had rested from all the
work he
did in creating the world.
[Comment: God used the words
“evening” and “morning” to
define and describe these days in order to make it clear that He only
took
seven ordinary days, seven evenings and mornings, to make the heavens,
the
earth, and all that is in them.]
Exodus Chapter 20:9-11
Six days shall you labor, and
do all your work: But the seventh
day is the sabbath
of the LORD your God: in it you shall
not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant,
or your
maidservant, or your cattle, or a foreigner who is
within your gates: For in
six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything that is in them, and rested on the seventh
day: for that reason the LORD blessed the sabbath
day, and made it holy.
[Comment: God here explicitly
tells us how He wants the
words of Genesis (those quoted above) understood, by telling us that
the seven
days of Genesis were one week in length.]
FROM ADAM
TO ABRAHAM
Because
God created Adam and Eve on the sixth day, we know that the entire
universe is
less than six days older than they are. However, God did not stop with
just
telling how long it took to make the heavens and earth. Because God did
not
want us to be deceived by the devil’s lies, He included a detailed
linage of
each generation from Adam to Abraham. That linage gives us a record of
the age
of the earth that takes us right up to the age of recorded history – a
record
that clearly refutes the “prehistoric” mythology so popular in secular
literature.
Genesis
Chapter 5:1-32
1 ¶
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day
that God
created man, he made him in the likeness of God;
2 Male and female
he created them; and blessed
them, and called them human, on the day when they were created.
3
And
Adam lived
an hundred and thirty years, and fathered a
son in his own likeness, after his
image; and called his name Seth:
4
And
the days of
Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat
sons and
daughters:
5
And
all the
days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
6 ¶
And Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos:
7
And
Seth lived
after he fathered Enos eight hundred and
seven years,
and fathered sons and daughters:
8
And
all the
days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died.
9
And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan:
10
And Enos lived after he begat Cainan
eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters:
11
And
all the
days of Enos were nine hundred and five
years: and he
died.
12
And Cainan lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel:
13
And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel
eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters:
14
And
all the
days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten
years: and
he died.
15
And Mahalaleel lived and sixty-five years, and begat
Jared:
16
And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight
hundred and
thirty years, and begat sons and daughters:
17
And
all the
days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred and
ninety-five
years: and he died.
18
And
Jared lived
an hundred and sixty-two years, and he begat Enoch:
19
And
Jared lived
after he fathered Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and
daughters:
20
And
all the
days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years: and he died.
21 ¶
And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat
Methuselah:
22
And
Enoch
walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and
begat sons
and daughters:
23
And
all the
days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:
24
And
Enoch
walked with God: and he was not; for
God took him.
25 ¶ And Methuselah
lived one hundred and eighty-seven years, and begat Lamech:
26
And
Methuselah
lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred
and
eighty-two years, and begat sons and daughters:
27
And
all the
days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years: and he died.
28 ¶
And Lamech lived one hundred
eighty and
two years, and begat a son:
29
And
he called
his name Noah, saying, This one will
bring us relief from our work and from
the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has
cursed.
30 And after he
begat Noah Lamech
lived five hundred and ninety-five years, and begat sons and daughters:
31
And
all the
days of Lamech were seven hundred and
seventy-seven
years: and he died.
32
And
Noah was
five hundred years old: and Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
[Comment:
This linage is carefully worded to preclude any claim that some
generations may
have been omitted. Since the key factor in determining the amount of
time which
transpired is the number of years that passed between the birth of each
patriarch
and the birth of his son, we have an exact record of the time. And,
these
verses tell us that Noah was born one thousand and fifty six years
after the creation
of Adam, and his sons were born five hundred years after that.]
Genesis Chapter 11:10-26
10 ¶ These
are the generations of Shem: Shem was
one hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad
two years after the flood:
11
And
Shem lived
after he begat Arphaxad five hundred
years, and begat
sons and daughters.
12
And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah:
13
And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah
four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
14
And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:
15
And Salah lived after he begat Eber
four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
16
And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:
17
And Eber lived after he begat Peleg
four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
18
And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:
19
And Peleg lived after he begat Reu
two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.
20
And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug:
21
And Reu lived after he begat Serug
two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters.
22
And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor:
23
And Serug lived after he begat Nahor
two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
24
And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah:
25
And Nahor lived after he begat Terah
an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters.
26
And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and
[Comment: A comparison of
Genesis 5:32, 7:6 and
Genesis Chapter
32
And
the days of
Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in
1 ¶
Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Depart from your
country, and
from your kindred, and from your father’s house, to a land that I will
show
you:
2
And I
will make
of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great;
and you
will be a blessing:
3
And I
will
bless those who bless you, and curse him who curses you: and in you all
the
families of the earth will be blessed.
4 ¶
So Abram departed, as the LORD had told him; and
[Comment:
Since Terah was two hundred and five years
old when he died, and
Abram (Abraham) was seventy five years old at that time, we know that Terah was about one hundred and thirty years old
when Abram
was born. Therefore, Abraham was born approximately two thousand and
eight
years after the world was created.]
Genesis 21:5 And Abraham was one hundred years old,
when his son Isaac was born unto him.
Genesis 25:26 And after that his brother came out,
and his hand took hold on Esau’s heel; and his name was called Jacob:
and Isaac
was sixty years old when she bore them.
[Comment: These verses tell us
that Isaac was born when
Abraham was one hundred years old, and Jacob (
Genesis 47:28 And Jacob lived in the
[Comment: Thus Jacob died in
[NOTE: Besides the verses
quoted above the Bible also makes
certain statements that can be used to correlate the Genesis record
with
secular history. For example: God said to Abraham, “For four hundred
years your
descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will
serve
them; and they will afflict them;” (Genesis
As to recorded history: The
dedication of Solomon’s
CONCLUSION
In his
massive work, “THE ANNALS OF THE WORLD” James Ussher
correlates the Biblical timeline with recorded history, and in so doing
has
calculated the year of Jacob’s death at 1689 BC. Although individual
scholars
may have questions that are not answered by Scripture, the words’ “My
sheep
hear my voice,” tell us that no one who is truly a disciple of Christ
will ever
deny or contradict what the Bible says about the age of the earth, nor
will
they try to read millions of years into the text (John 10:27, Isaiah
8:20).
“The question is not: Is this or that
doctrine clearly
stated in the Confessions? But: Is this or that doctrine set forth in
God’s
Word? If it is set forth in Holy Writ, it is for this reason a church
dogma,
even though not a word is said about it in the Confessions of the
church. The
reason for this is not difficult to perceive. The Christian Church is
not the
lord of God’s doctrine, but only its servant. Its paramount purpose is
not to
create new doctrines but to preach the doctrines which its Lord has
revealed. The
dogmatician who draws his teachings from
any other
source than Holy Scriptures perpetrates an inexcusable fraud upon the
Church…
Christian ministers, teachers, and missionaries must proclaim to their
hearers
God’s Word, not their own, so that… not one doctrine is taught that is
not in
agreement with Holy Scripture.” (Christian Dogmatics, by John Theodore Mueller, pages 62,
63.)
Gary Ray Branscome
www.branscome.org